Swan Song

by Tracey Ward

  “Houdini is dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Last Halloween after an act.”

  “You see? Even Houdini isn’t Houdini.”

  “Certainly not anymore,” I mutter.

  He smirks into his glass. “You’re a dark one.”

  “Said the pot to the kettle.”

  He reaches out and runs his fingertips along the fabric of my dress, caressing the back of my leg beneath it.

  “We’re alone now,” he says quietly.

  I glare down at him. “You have to be kidding me.”

  He chuckles, pulling me down so I fall into his lap and his arms weave around me, holding me tightly. I sigh with a strange relief. I want all of that coiled, dangerous strength that exists in him to be wrapped around me, making me feel like nothing on this entire Earth could ever hurt me because he absolutely would not have it. I’ve never been good with being soft, but it doesn’t feel exactly like weakness with him. It feels like safety. It feels like when my dad would hug my momma on the porch and she’d smile and lean into him, singing in the back of her throat as he swayed her side to side. Like dancing.

  “I’m leaving day after tomorrow,” he tells me quietly.

  I’m not surprised. He’s been here nearly three months as it is, longer than I expected him to stay, but it doesn’t mean I’m excited that he’s going. Far from it.

  “Business?” I ask vaguely.

  “Yes.”

  “Is the Outfit still paying you to be here?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the start.”

  “Then why did you do stay?”

  “For you,” he answers plainly. “But you already knew that.”

  I smile faintly, feeling the unfamiliar burn of a blush on my cheeks. “There’s knowing a thing and there’s knowing a thing.”

  “And now that you know why I stayed?”

  “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbles, draining his glass of bourbon. “Me too.”

  I curl into him, nuzzling my head into the crook of his neck until I can smell his scent and feel his pulse against my temple, sure and strong. He lazily drags his fingers up and down my arm, his other hand resting on my knee, and there’s nothing I’d rather do in the world than stay there in that chair with Drew forever. It’s a strange kind of feeling to have, one I’m not used to and never thought I’d understand. It’s not even something I’m sure I believe in, but since the moment I met him, I’ve felt drawn to him. Gravity has its hold on me and I hope it’s pulling me forward, guiding me north, but I’m on unfamiliar territory. I’m all turned around and there’s a feeling in my gut that’s telling me I’m headed straight south.

  “Come to New York with me,” he says suddenly, his voice vibrating in my ear.

  I sit up in surprise, looking down at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Don’t I look serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  “Come with me,” he repeats.

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “I’ll buy your train ticket.”

  I blink, my heart racing with fear and excitement. “I can’t get away from the club.”

  “Yes you can,” he insists sternly. “When was your last vacation?”

  “Never.”

  “You’re due. You have that friend, Lucy, the one seeing some guy in the city. How often does she visit him?”

  “Every week she meets up with him at the airport in Chicago as he flies through, but once a month she takes the train up to see him and his family.”

  “Tag along this month. Tell her you need a break from the club.” He runs his hand up over my shoulder and into my hair at the base of my neck. “I’ll take you to the Cotton Club.”

  My breath turns to ice in my lungs. “In Harlem?”

  “Yeah,” he chuckles. “The one in Harlem.”

  I should be excited about that. I should be soaring. Flying high on the idea of seeing my dream come true. Setting foot inside the CC doesn’t mean I’m singing there, it doesn’t mean much of anything at all other than finally touching the star I’ve been chasing for the last six years. Putting my hand to flame and feeling the heat on my skin, on my face, in my heart, and knowing it’s real. It’s such a simple thing to mean everything, but still… still I don’t feel it. Not entirely. What I feel more than anything is a thrill at the idea of sitting at a table next to Drew out in the open with a drink in my hand and Ella on stage. I want to taste the life. The difference it can bring being in New York and away from Cicero and the Capones and Tommy. I want a shot at being Addison.

  “Three weeks from now,” I tell him, my words coming in a jumbled rush. “Luce will go to see him three weeks from now. Saturday, the seventh.”

  “I’ll mail you a ticket.”

  I lean in and kiss him softly, slowly. I kiss him the way he makes love to me – like he’s all in, and as his arms tighten against me, squeezing me hard, and his tongue takes my mouth, I let go of every breath and every worry in my body. I let him in, let him fill those vacant spaces, and I’m full to bursting with so much emotion that I can’t focus on any of it enough to see it clearly, but I can feel it. I can hear it. It’s a bright blur of motion, music, and light that’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, but I know what it is.

  “I love you,” I breathe.

  He takes hold of my face, stopping me. I hover with my mouth over his and his breath rebounding off of mine, and I’m steady. I’m solid and unafraid, because I already know.

  I already know.

  He runs his thumbs along my cheeks softly, pressing his forehead to mine. “Addy,” he rumbles, deep and so low, “I—“

  The doorknob turns sharply. I jump with a start when there’s the bang of a body against it then the spinning of the knob again.

  “What the fuck?” comes a muffled exclamation from the outside.

  It’s Hal. Not as bad as Tommy, but not good either.

  I pull back to look down at Drew. I’m sure panic is written all over my face, but he looks utterly calm and composed. He shakes his head at me sharply and I stand up straight, pulling myself together. He stands as well, putting me behind him and taking his half-drunk glass up in his hand. When he strides to the door to open it, easy as anything, I wonder why he’s not an actor.

  “Birdy,” I hear Hal say in surprise. “What are you doing in the boss’ office?”

  “Hiding,” Birdy drawls, sounding bored.

  He turns from the door and leads Hal lazily into the room. Hal surveys the dark space sharply but his eyes go saucer wide when they land on me.

  “Adrian?”

  “Hal.”

  “What are you doin’ in here with him?”

  “Playing pinochle,” I deadpan. “What does it look like we’re doing?”

  He looks between us slowly. “If I were to wager a guess—“

  “I wouldn’t,” Birdy warns quietly. Deadly.

  Hal licks his lips, avoiding Birdy’s eyes. “It don’t look good, Aid.” He dares a glance at Birdy who watches him with a vacant stare.

  “We darted in from the hall when the alarm sounded, Hal.” I tell him patiently, taking a casual seat on the arm of the leather lounge chair Drew vacated. “We did exactly what we’re supposed to.”

  “Tommy wouldn’t like it.”

  “Would Tommy rather she was in here alone?” Birdy asks. He takes a seat at Ralph’s desk, leaning back and lighting a cigarette. The room is darker for a moment as all of the light seems to be sucked into the end of his match. Then it flares as he puffs in, the embers igniting, the light dying as he exhales sharply. “Or if I’d left her in the hall to fend for herself? Is that what he’d like?”

  “He’d like to have taken care of her himself,” Hal says bitingly.

  “Then he should have been here, shouldn’t he?”

  Birdy’s tone puts an end to the conversation. It’s the kind of tone that threatens to put an
end to everything else in the world if it so chooses. His dark outline sits menacingly across the room, the faint glow from the end of his cigarette standing out against the dark, looking tame in comparison to the heat from his gaze. Hal needs to shut the hell up, I think.

  “Well the all clear has been sounded. It wasn’t a raid. They burst in waving paperwork around, shouting that they had a warrant, but when Rick got his hands on it, it wasn’t nothin’ but a Jesus pamphlet lifted from the church down the street. They had nothin’ so Tommy and Rick sent ‘em packin’. ” He heads for the door, opening it and waiting for us to follow. “Let’s move.”

  I’m a little impressed with his stance. He’s looking dispassionately at Birdy. As though he’s not squaring off with a nightmare.

  “Gladly,” I mutter, heading quickly for the door.

  As I pass Hal he leans in and whispers, “You know I gotta tell him.”

  I don’t acknowledge that I’ve heard him, but I have. Loud and clear, and I realize my mistake. It was wanting something. Anything. You can’t have anything in this world. Nothing worth keeping because that’s the first thing they’ll take from you when everything goes south.

  And everything goes south eventually. That’s just gravity.

  Chapter Twenty

  Drew leaves the next day. I don’t see him before he goes and it hurts, but it’s alright. I’ll see him again. I keep reminding myself of that.

  Lucy is an easy sell on letting me go to New York with her. She’s thrilled I’m finally pursuing my dream of visiting NYC, not caring what Tommy thinks of it – and what he thinks is that it’s stupid, but Ralph agreed I deserve a break, so there’s nothing he can do to stop me short of chaining me to a radiator. Lucy is so excited that I’m getting out of town that there’s even talk of introducing me to some of her beau’s cousins. I think she’s trying to make a respectable woman out of me, and if she only knew the real reason I was going to New York… Well, she wouldn’t be happy.

  But I am. Especially when I get a letter in the mail a week later with a train ticket to New York inside, I feel light as air. I could fly to New York then and there on my joy alone.

  Until I read the date on the ticket, a date that sends me running for the calendar in the kitchen. I can’t believe I didn’t notice until now, but when I look at the calendar, I know it’s true. I check it three times, willing it to be wrong, but the thick black numbers never change and they never lie.

  I sink to the ground, gravity pushing hard and heavy on my shoulders, and I’m heading straight south. No doubt about it.

  Rosaline finds me there three hours later. My back aches and my ass has gone dead from sitting on the cold, hard floor, but I can’t move. I can’t even think. All I can do is stare at the ticket clutched in my trembling hands.

  “Aid?” she asks cautiously. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I mumble numbly.

  “Whatcha doin’ down there?”

  I shake my head vaguely, unsure.

  Rosaline kneels in front of me, her face pinched with concern. “What’s the matter, hon?”

  My lower lip quivers, but I bite it hard, forcing it to still. I keep that dam in place because the devastation it will bring if it’s allowed to collapse and the flood run free will be irreparable. I’ll never recover from it. I’m probably finished as it is.

  “I’m late,” I whisper weakly. I clear my throat, raising my eyes to hers and repeating more firmly, “I’m late.”

  She glances down at the ticket in my hand, frowning. “For what? For the train? Where are you going?”

  “No. I’m late.”

  “Oh my God,” she breathes, her eyes going wide and flickering to my flat stomach. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. By more than a week.”

  “Late doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “I’ve never been late in my life. Not once.”

  She slumps down onto her ass, sitting next to me with her back against the wall. “Shit,” she mutters.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it… you know. Is it…?”

  I roll my head to look at her nervous face. “Is it Tommy’s?”

  She grimaces. “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Well,” she sighs heavily, “thank goodness for that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sits silently next to me, staring straight ahead.

  “You’re not going to ask who the dad is?” I prod.

  “If you wanted me to know, you’d tell me. As long as it’s not Tommy’s, how bad can it be, you know?”

  I let my head roll forward and chuckle darkly. “Yeah. How bad can it be?”

  “What are you gonna do? Are you gonna tell the guy or are you gonna… call the doctor?”

  I’ve thought about that question before. I thought about it long and hard the day after Tommy and I made our mistake. What would I do? Would I keep it and say goodbye to any hope or dream I ever had? Or would I call the doc, let the old German dope me up, and hope for the best. I’d seen other girls go through it. They came out dead eyed and confused, but they came back to themselves by degrees. They were never quite the same, though. There was always something a little off. Some part of them that was always a little sad or even a little scared, like they were terrified it would happen again. It changed you, no matter what you did and from what I’d seen, the guy rarely stuck around for the aftermath. Be it the baby or the vacant stares, the girl was usually alone.

  Then there were the girls that killed themselves to avoid the decision entirely. To escape the scandal and the loneliness. They jumped off bridges into icy waters, they leapt from buildings, stepped in front of trains, ate bullets, drank poison. There are a million ways to die and a million different ways to live your life, and you only have one shot at any of it, so how the hell is anyone supposed to get it right?

  I have no idea.

  ***

  Lucy and I ride the train to New York together.

  For sixteen hours.

  Overnight.

  It’s the most painful experience of my life, and not because of the company or the rocking train or the excessively long time cooped up with strangers sharing a bathroom while vomiting uncontrollably from morning sickness caused by a pregnancy I’m still not sure what to think of. No, the worst part of it all was knowing I’m heading toward Drew.

  Drew who doesn’t know I’m pregnant.

  Birdy who ends lives for a living, not nurture them.

  Drew who can make me smile just by saying my name.

  Birdy who loves nothing and no one.

  I’m thrilled to see him, but I’m also terrified. Which man will I get? Birdy? Or Drew?

  When we got off the train in the morning, Rob is there waiting for us. Lucy squeals and runs to him, jumping into his arms as though they haven’t seen each other in years when they had lunch together in Chicago just last week. Rob picks her up and swings her around in a circle that only makes her squeal louder.

  It makes me dizzy.

  “Come on, darling,” she says breathlessly when he finally puts her down. She pulls him toward me, all smiles and youthful glow. “You have to meet my dear friend, Adrian.”

  Rob offers me his hand and when I take it, it’s surprising warm and soft. He shakes my firmly, smiling down at me from his incredibly tall height, and I’m struck by how warm his eyes are. I’m not used to that kind of kindness of display and when I see it so blatant it knocks me for a loop. I catch myself wondering what his angle is.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” he says earnestly.

  “You too. Thanks for picking us up.”

  He frowns, surprised. “Oh, are you coming with us?”

  I glance nervously at Lucy. “I thought I was staying with you.”

  “You are,” she insists, frowning at Rob. “I told you she was coming. We just talked about it last week.”

  “I know, but I got to chatting with this guy while I was waiting for you…” he glances around, searching th
e crowd from his bird’s eye view, “and I told him I was picking up my girl and her friend Adrian, and he said he was here to pick up an Adrian too. I said, ‘Adrian from Chicago?’ and he said, ‘That’s the one.’ so I said, ‘Small world’—Oh! There he is. Andy! I found her for ya!”

  I follow Rob’s eyes to the familiar shadow walking toward us. Dark overcoat, dark hat, dark shoes. Nothing at all memorable or interesting about him. Nothing but his eyes and the man hiding behind them, but you have to dig to find him. You have to want him badly enough.

  And I do.

  He grins when he sees me and I sag a little with relief. Drew. I’m getting Drew, at least for now, and the glimmer of hope that fact gives me sits warm and solid in my stomach until I feel like a real person again and less like a woman on death row.

  “You made it,” he greets me, planting a chaste kiss on my cheek. “How was the train ride?”

  “Long. I don’t know how you do it?”

  “I read.”

  “I shudder to think what kind of material.”

  “If you’re lucky, I’ll let you judge me by my bookshelf.”

  Lucy clears her throat pointedly, her eyes bulging at me slightly.

  “Sorry,” I tell her quickly, pointing to Drew. “This is—“

  “Andy,” Drew interrupts, offering her his hand. “Nice to meet you. You must be Lucy.”

  “I must, yes,” she answers warily. “How do you know Adrian?”

  “We’re acquaintances from Chicago.”

  “From the club?”

  “That’s right. I’ve come to steal her away from you this weekend?”

  Lucy’s eyes manage to go wider. “She’ll be staying with you?”

  “Luce,” I mumble, warning her to back off.

  “Adrian, I think it’d be better if you stayed with me at Rob’s aunt’s house, the way we had planned,” she tells me pointedly.

  “I think it’d be better if I went with D—Andy,” I stumble.

  “And I think you should come with me.”

  I bristle at her tone; her condescending, motherly tone. “And I think you should mind your own business,” I tell her hotly.

  We stare at each other, neither of us willing to budge on the issue. I’m not going with her and she’s not leaving without me, and I’m starting to worry that my first weekend in New York will be spent entirely at the train station.